I’ve spent the last couple of months playing around with things in 3d (OpenGL) on the iPhone. I find it easier to stick with and learn something if there’s a definite end goal, and so after thinking about it for a while, I decided to do a version of the classic ZX Spectrum game 3d Ant Attack by Sandy White (see his page here: Sandy Whites Ant Attack page).

The main difference between the original and this one is that my version will be ‘proper’ 3d, compared to the isometric original (not to disrespect that version, it’s an absolute classic). This also means we can get nice things happening, like zooming and panning the camera, lights, textures and other bits and pieces.

Here’s a screenshot of how it’s coming along – all graphics (quite clearly) are programmer art. Hopefully I can find someone to help me out with something a little bit prettier.

Graphic artist needed! Click to zoom.

The green squares overlaid are the control buttons (left big box for movement, right smaller box for jump). I’m finding the hardest thing to get right is the control method on the iPhone, and am still not happy with how I’ve got it at the moment. The small brightly coloured cube is your player (I did mention it was programmer art).

So far I’ve got the map in, along with a camera system allowing zooming and switching angles. You can move the player box, jumping and general map collision are working well. I’ve also got 5 ants (well, brightly coloured boxes) running around and colliding with the walls. Current frame rate (on a 1st gen iPod touch) is between 40 and 60fps.

Still to be done then, in no particular order:

A.I. for the ants

People to rescue

Sound

Better graphics (any volunteers?)

Lighting

User interface tweaks

Bombs

Menu screens

Sounds like a lot of stuff, but after getting all the 3d stuff going I’m hoping I’ve got the hard bits done….source code will follow when it’s finished if anyone’s interested.